I have DS 4.5.1.6 but still can't use Uber Area Lights

DS crashes when I try to render a scene with Uber Area Lights. I reported this as a bug and was told that it works OK and I should try installing the Genesis Starter Essentials 1.6 in case there was still an old version of Uber Area Lights in my content. Doing this didn't work and I don't know what else to try. The UberAreaLight Base is a .dsa file from 2012. Seems weird to me that it's not a later file and a .duf.

I would try reinstalling both DS and the Starter Essentials. If that doesn't fix it, try rendering and then when DS crashes go to the log file (C:\Users\You\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio 4\log.txt) and see what the last few messages are.

Thank you all so much for this thread, I was having the same problem with the area lights and IG Studio lights. Contacted DAZ and was told they could not recreate the conditions that were causing the area lights to crash Studio, was also told that IG Studio lights don't work in Studio 4.5 and was offered a refund if the purchase was less than 30 days (which I didn't take them up on).

Seeing this thread I turned off Progressive Rendering and it worked, re-installed IG Studio Lights set up a scene and it rendered fine, so now I am a happy chappy, Thanks again barbult and Luci45

I've just updated my Daz4 to 4.5pro a few days ago so I have the latest build. Learning to render with 3delight. Testing a simple scene with Tori Genesis, with one single IBL sphere with Uber Area Light base. Encountered the same crash issue above. Eventually found the 'turn off progressive rendering" solution. Works for me now. Thanks a bunch guys and gals. Amazing my 64bit x5670 (i7 equiv) with 12G RAM can't handle the spike...

Now to the next render weirdness.. Tori's skin rendered with vertex lines. I loaded Gabi material on her, same issue. The render settings I use is the default one. Am I missing something obvious? Please advice.

Shading Rate to low, as in too high a value...lower is better...higher is not. :)

In the Advanced Render Settings Pane look for the shading rate and lowered it to , start at .50 and do a test render or lower until it disappears.

These settings is your main Quality control centre. The only other areas of quality you need to take in to consideration is UberEnvironment2 (UE2) as it has some further controls included which need adjusting too Learning UberEnvironment2

Shading Rate to low, as in too high a value...lower is better...higher is not. :)

In the Advanced Render Settings Pane look for the shading rate and lowered it to , start at .50 and do a test render or lower until it disappears.

These settings is your main Quality control centre. The only other areas of quality you need to take in to consideration is UberEnvironment2 (UE2) as it has some further controls included which need adjusting too Learning UberEnvironment2

The actual cause of the mesh showing is most likely Shadow Minimum Bias settings too low.

Sometimes a finer shading rate will solve it, sometimes you can increase the subdivisions, sometimes even a change of camera angle!
Changing the Shadow Bias should always solve it. Every light has its own Shadow Bias setting (including UE) so you have to find the one that's causing it.

I tried adjusting shading rate all the way down but it didn't resolve the mesh lines issue. After a whole day of trials and errors (resintalling characters and material files) I discovered the culprit is the very first HDR image I used for the IBL sphere. So for whatever reason that particular jpg causes those artifacts. Switching the pics to a few other equally huge 5000x2500 jpgs seem to be fine. So far. Will keep the forum posted just in case others bump into similar issues.